The Order of Chaos
by ForAnEye
Summary: The Realm of Chaos is in crisis, the careful balance of the forces of light and dark set awry by malevolent ambitions. Only one redhead burnout can save the Realm's inhabitants, but will she?


Her sleep had been filled with dark dreams, and consciousness found her body sore and her mind spinning. Everything ached, and awareness came to her more slowly than it should have. Her eyelid opened only with some effort, and her body fought every attempt she made to get into a sitting position. She remembered nothing of the previous evening, nor did she recognize the place in which she had awoken, but neither of these things were particularly surprising. When one partied as hard as Kimberly O'Leary, one rarely expected to wake up in a bed they recognized.

However, it did concern Kim that the only other person in the room was standing at the foot of the slab of smooth rock that had apparently served as a bed. He was staring staring intensely down at her, whether with concern or anticipation she could not tell. His expression was otherwise unreadable, his skin ashen and his hair quite dark. He was shirtless, but Kimberly somehow got the impression that he wasn't dressed-down. Perhaps it was the impractically large knife strapped to his uncomfortably tight-looking pants.

Kim curled inwards and then sprung forward from the bed just as the man looked ready to speak. Her arms screamed with pain as both swung forwards, fingers finding the man's throat just as he hit the floor. Her hair, unwashed and unbrushed, hung in tangled strands about her fury-twisted face. She spoke, too hoarse to be loud.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? Did you knock me out?" The man struggled to respond, but the fingers around his windpipe made this impossible, no matter how he tugged and struck at them. "You think I'm some kind of punk, huh? Some kind of street-bitch nobody'd miss?! Fuck you!" The man's head tossed from side to side, perhaps to deny this, but Kimberly ignored him. His mouth moved soundlessly, the muscles of his torso flexing in a fruitless attempt to buck her off. Her position on his chest kept him from moving with any real efficacy. Not wanting to risk that he'd regain his composure, she began jerking his head back and forth by the neck. slamming it against the stone floor.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spied him reaching for the blade at his belt. She scooted and swung a foot out, stomping on his wrist with a heavy _clump_! The sound gave her pause as she realized she was still wearing her platform boots. It hadn't occurred to her to check before she started choking the man, and she didn't even need to glance down to affirm that she was clad in everything she could last remember wearing.

She unwound her fingers from the man's neck and opened her mouth to apologize, realizing as she did that her revelation had come a moment too late. The man was motionless, and in the silence in the room she could hear no breathing. His eyes remained open, and his expression seemed to be that of some dispassionate surprise, but Kim saw no lucidity in his stare.

"Shit," She leaned back against the edge of the stone slab she'd apparently been sleeping on, gazing down at the body. She supposed she should have let him say his piece _before_ strangling him, but there was nothing to be done about it now. 

The room was almost completely unfurnished. There was no nightstand, no place to store clothes, and a rudimentary stove that looked like something out of the Flintstones. Kim could only imagine what kind of a freak the guy must have been, further softening any misgivings she might've had. She stepped over the corpse, bending down to take the strange-looking weapon from his belt. The bulk of it was gold or plated as such, appealingly molded with beautiful flourishes and ornamental twists. The blade itself was made of a shimmering bluish material, crystal in appearance. Kim at once considered how much it might pawn for, given how ornamental it was.

What struck Kim most of all was the lightness of it, for although it was partly metal and near as long as her thigh, even Kim's sore and aching arm held it with surprising ease. Keeping it clutched in one hand, Kimberly availed herself of the room's sole exit, a circular door set into the wall opposite the bed. It lead into a cramped, dark set of stairs leading up. Light streamed in thin shafts through another door at the top of the stairwell, stinging her eyes in the gloom.

Upon opening the door at the top, a plume of dust-laden air flew into her face, and were it not for her grip on the handle she would have been sent tumbling back down the stone steps. She coughed, doubling over and kneeling on the steep incline. "What the fuck?!" Her voice was barely audible over the howling wind, which blew efven more dust into the confines of the little stairwell. She threw herself against the door, slamming it shut before the whole chamber was filled with befouled air. She quickly clambered a ways down to where she could breathe, panting and gasping and hoarser than ever before.

She stumbled back into the little stone room from which she had come. If this man slept here, she supposed, he surely had some way of dealing with this. She dug around in the stove first, finding only a pile of sticks and some flint, and found nothing on or around the bare slab of stone. She had nearly been reduced to feeling around the walls for secret passages when it occurred to her to check the man's body.

There, around his neck and shoulders, was a dark blue scarf. She took one of the ends and slowly wound it away from him. It was long, the cloth was thick, and Kim supposed it would have to do. She wound it carefully around her head, save for a small slit for her eyes. Tangled locks of hair poked out of the interwoven wrappings, uncomfortable but livable.

Out she went again, clinging to the doorframe with one hand and shielding her eyes with the other. The dust scraped painfully against her uncovered arms, but the facewrap kept it clear of her mouth and nose. Before her was a blasted, rocky plain bereft of any life that she could see. Husks of dead and withered trees lay scattered here and there and, though she was not certain, she thought she could see bleached bones half-buried in the dusty red earth.

She had emerged from the base of a high cliff, into which the little homestead had been carved out. Why anyone would go to the trouble to _live_ in a hellscape like this was completely beyond her. She could hardly see fifty feet ahead of her, so thick was the storm, and the dust continued to bite at any inch of flesh she'd left exposed. Kimberly was no survivalist, but she didn't need to be to recognize how unwise it was to set out into a storm like this.

Defeated once more, she slunk back into the little stone room. Minutes later, she deposited the nude body of the man outside, rolling him a respectable distance away from the door. There was no reason to have a dead body stinking up her only shelter. Rifling through his pants gleaned a waterskin and some odd-smelling jerky. Kim had consigned herself to the notion that this was a survival situation until the storm let up, loathsome though the notion was.

Hours passed in silence. Nothing in the room was worth contemplating, and her predicament was so vast and confusing that she had no clue where to start. It was obvious, at least, that she'd been dragged here after blacking out the night before, but what had she been doing? Her memory answered her only with blurry vagaries; there was a competition of some sort, a drunken brawl without fists or blades. Duel Monsters, perhaps? She didn't engage in any other sort of competitive sport, unless competitive drinking qualified.

As it was, she had killed the only man with any shred of insight into where she was and how she had gotten there, and was now trapped with a pilfered blade and a facewrap in some miserable little hole in the ground. Bitterly, wearily, she draped her still-sore body across the stone slab and tried her best to sleep.


End file.
